A Wolf at the Door

stopped in her tracks, almost causing a pileup, and whirled on me, her eyes flashing.

“Just because he has money doesn’t give him the right to treat people like that. Waitress or no.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Are you really that naive? This is Hollywood. Money gets you anything you want.”

“Not when I’m around. No one puts their hands on a woman if she doesn’t want it. I’d have done the same for you, and I don’t even like you. Women are to be respected, not manhandled.”

Whatever else she had to say on the subject was lost when her eyes flicked to something over my shoulder. I had a split second to see something dark moving up on my left side, and I reacted instinctively.

One perfectly executed hip throw later, a very startled man with a camera stared up at me from the ground. He blinked twice, then the flash went off, blinding all of us.

“Wonderful! Now we’ve moved on to attacking the paparazzi! Perfect.” Belatedly, she glanced at the man on the ground. “Sorry.” Maybe someday, if she practiced this “acting” thing she was supposedly so good at, she might even sound like she meant it. “Get his ass in the car before he beats up something else.”

The camera kept snapping as we got in the limo, flashes going off around us like strobes. Gretchen took up one whole seat herself, making it very clear that the three of us “animals” weren’t to soil her personal space. I found myself sandwiched between Bobby and Tai, who kept exchanging grins behind my back.

Finally, I sighed. “Okay. Out with it.”

They both busted up into snickers, and Bobby asked, “Jumpy much?”

I gave him a very serious look. “You have no idea.”

9

Someone was pounding a sledgehammer into my skull, and I didn’t much appreciate it. After some flopping around in a bed that was way too huge and very much lacking a Mira, then struggling to untangle myself from a comforter that was way too puffy, I finally realized that the pounding was on my door, not my dome.

What the hell time is it? The clock said it was eight a.m., but my body said “Hey, jerk, you’re not sixteen anymore.” Obviously, my days of partying all night were long over.

“Coming! Coming…” I grumbled as I padded across the room. “Keep your pants on.”

The peephole revealed a room service cart outside, and the scent of bacon was already wafting under the door. My brain pointed out that I hadn’t ordered breakfast, but my stomach pointedly refused to care. I opened the door.

“Where would you like me to put it, sir?” The attendant wheeled the cart past me while I stood there trying to figure out why I knew that voice. When he stood up, looking expectantly at me for his tip, I knew.

“Spencer?” Yes, Chatty Spencer from the plane trip blinked at me in surprise, then broke into a broad smile.

“Oh, hey! Jesse Dawson from the airplane. The champion! I remember you!”

I remembered him too, and I didn’t really believe in coincidences. I grabbed him by the collar of his neatly pressed chef’s coat and slammed him against the wall hard enough to hear his head thump. “What are you doing here?”

“Dude! Man, leggo!” He pried at my hands futilely.

“How did you find me? Who sent you?” With my forearm firmly across his throat, he didn’t really have any choice but to answer my questions. With my free hand, I roughly shoved his coat sleeve up, revealing a forearm bare of any marks. Even though he’d been clear yesterday, it was not what I’d expected to find.

“Dude, I work here! My cousin Leslie is a housekeeper, she got me the job.” The fear in his eyes was slowly replaced with something else, something excited and curious. “Who did you think I was? Are you, like, a spy or something?”

I didn’t answer him, and after a moment I relaxed my hold, stepping back. He’d passed through my warded door without incident, but…“Stand right there. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

Spencer held his hands up. “Sure, man, anything you say.” We watched each other closely as I backed my way to the bedside table where my collection of gadgets lay discarded.

Pressing Cam’s danger disk to the man’s forehead resulted in nothing remarkable, but he nearly went cross- eyed trying to see what I was doing. “What does that do?”

“Right now, it keeps you from getting your ass kicked.” If the thing was working, this guy wasn’t any kind of danger to me. Maybe it was just a coincidence. I finally let him go, but I refused to put my back to him. “I didn’t order breakfast.”

Spencer advanced slowly, making sure I could see his hands at all times, and picked up a slip of paper from the cart. “Standing order for this room. You’ll have breakfast every morning, unless you cancel it.”

“Who requested it?”

“Doesn’t say, so probably whoever set up the room reservation?”

Somehow, I wouldn’t have expected Axel to order me breakfast. It was more than a little odd. I lifted one of the metal lids to find a heaping pile of bacon and sausage and a couple of eggs over easy, just the way I liked them. I almost sent it back right then, out of sheer spite. Axel didn’t deserve to know me that well.

Still, bacon was bacon. I munched on a piece, figuring if it was poisoned, I’d at least die happy. “So…giving up on screenwriting already?”

Spencer chuckled. “Nah. Just gotta eat between now and my multimillion-dollar deal. Figure pushing a cart is better than digging ditches, right?”